Celebrating A Decade of Pink Staple Good Will

Now that I am about to graduate from college, I'm getting pretty sentimental and cheesy. I am an old fuddy duddy 22-year-old woman (in fact, today I was called Ms. Karen for the first time *gag*), and need to take the time to impart my wisdom on the younger generation. I started that today with my last session with my 6th grade tutee that I have been helping out with at Math this past semester. She wants to be an entrepreneur and asked for my advice on the matter. As a part of my duty as a role model, Ms Karen says: "Stay in school, take business classes, and get a job to prove yourself before asking for venture capital money." Maybe she'll think of me one day and give me some equity shares or something. You can't start thinking about these things TOO soon…..

But for those of you a little further in your journey to self discovery and freedom and all that, my advice to you is even simpler – use pink staples. Or blue, purple, green, mauve, cerulean….whatever. Basically every teacher at some point over the last 8 years has made a staple related comment. It usually involves circling my staple in whatever pen they are using to grade my assignment and writing a comment. Today it was – "I can always quickly identify your papers with the (pink) staple. Good branding!" It was a business related class so I chuckled at the note on branding. I never thought of it that way before, but it is so true.

Other teachers have gone for more subtle praise, such as "cute." But it never fails to go unnoticed for too long.

I tend to be a quiet person in class. I rarely speak up and voice my opinions. That pink staple may be the teacher's only peek into my fun, easy-going side. Hell, who knows how many times that staple pushed me from a A- to an A. At the risk of exaggerating, this pink staple could have been the key to graduate school admission success, from a long chain of events dating from the time I received this girly stapler as a meer child of 13.

After 4 years of ivy league edukatin, that's the best I can give you right now – get a pink stapler. Maybe you could get the same effect with a red paper clip or polka dotted alligator clips, but I wouldn't risk it. The pink staple is a proven success!